Summary: GAO recommends that the Department of Labor comprehensively review current regulations under the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act and restructure white-collar exemptions from overtime pay in order to better accommodate today's workplace and anticipate future workplace trends. Demographic, technological, and industrial changes during the last 50 years have caused both employers and employees to question the act's applicability today. Employers worry about their liability for violations of a salary-versus-wages test for exemption, about the rise in the number of highly skilled and well-paid technicians performing the same jobs as exempt professionals with academic degrees, and about confusion and inconsistency in classifying for exemption such employees as administrators and professionals whose jobs require judgment and discretion. Employees worry that more employees than ever are potentially exempt because of inflation's erosion of salary-level limitations and that low-income supervisory employees are not protected from oversimplification of the test that exempts employees because their job duties involve managerial or professional skills.
